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- Bergqvist, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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Gendered Attitudes Towards Physical Tending Amongst the Piously Religious of Late Medieval Sweden
- 2014
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Ingår i: Medicine, healing and performance. - 9781782971580 ; , s. 86-105
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gendered differences concerning intellectual and physical religious expressions in medieval Europe have previously been discussed by several medievalists. It has been suggested that medieval male piety was expressed primarily in practical and intellectual terms within canonical rituals and in verbalized form in prayers and mass. Female piety, on the other hand, is thought to have been expressed in more physical terms, using bodily expressions as self starvation and the embracement of disease. Notifications in the Swedish late medieval Vadstena Diary, discussed in this article, suggest that the brethren who kept the diary were biased by these gendered ideals in their selection of what and how they documented the diseases and deaths of the female and male monastic members. It seems as if it was perceived as especially serious and noteworthy when male inhabitants were afflicted in ways that hindered their performance of their ritual duties. For women it seems as if leprosy might have been perceived as something that elevated their pious status by their distressful endurance. It also seems as if obesity – the opposite to the ideal of the holy anorectic – was judged as more shameful in a pious woman than in a pious man. In the article I take the discussion of late medieval pious ideals one step further and suggest that these gendered attitudes affected what kind of surgical, medical and hygienic treatments were expected by and provided for male and female monastic inhabitants. Through the rich archaeological materials from Cistercian institutions (mainly Alvastra and Vreta) it is possible to study the traces of their lived reality. The archaeological finds indicate that while special equipment for medication existed at both male and female institutions, surgical treatments were more extensively provided at male institutions. The same goes for wound treatments and the attention to personal hygiene.
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- Bergqvist, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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Kropp, själ och läkekonst. Kulturhistorisk tolkning av medicinska föremål från Vreta kloster.
- 2010
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Ingår i: Fokus Vreta kloster. 17 nya rön om Sveriges äldsta kloster.. ; , s. 345-368
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During excavations of the nunnery of Vreta, a number of artefacts for medical and hygienic use were found, including medical vessels, a clasp-knife, different types of forceps, phlebotomy knives and a surgical sharp hook. The artefacts show that medical and most probably some surgical activity has taken place there. Compared to other Swedish Cistercian monasteries, as the nunnery of Gudhem and the male institutions of Alvastra and Varnhem, it is clear, though, that artefacts for medical and hygienic use are both more abundant and more differentiated concerning type at the male institutions. Most notably missing from the female institutions are specialized articles used for cleansing wounds, like curettes and probes, and hygienic articles, like ear scopes and tooth-picks/nail-cleaners. In this paper, possible explanations for this phenomenon are discussed and I argue that the answer might lie in gender differentiated forms of experiencing and expressing piety and advanced spirituality. The medieval idea of the female constitution as more physical than the male may have had an impact on women’s religious ideals, apprehensions and experiences, towards a higher inclination amongst religious women to use physical ascetics as a way to attain elevated spirituality. Certain diseases and physical complaints might therefore to a lesser extent have been seen as called for to cure when suffered by religious women than when suffered by religious men. I also propose that as women were conceived to be closer to nature, they might have been expected to have larger endurance concerning certain physical ills. I suggest that what is reflected in the archaeological materials from Swedish female and male Cistercian monasteries is a higher inclination among pious women to include the neglecting of wounds and other diseases with equivalent symptoms, as well as certain everyday hygienic practices, in the physical ascetics of dedicated religiosity.
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- Bergqvist, Johanna
(författare)
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Läkare och läkande : läkekonstens professionalisering i Sverige under medeltid och renässans
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis examines the arts of healing in the area of present-day Sweden dur¬ing the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (ca. 1100–1600 AD). It focuses on secular arts of healing for the body, rather than magical and religious healing or the cure of the soul. It is done by studying material culture in the form of archaeological finds from Southern Sweden and contemporary written sources from the Nordic region. The ques¬tions asked can be grouped in three main themes: Perceptions of disease, affliction and injury, Practitioners of the arts of healing and Arts of healing. I examine the underlying understandings or perceptions of disease as well as attitudes towards disease as such and towards the afflicted individuals. Old Norse names and designations in the first half of the Middle Ages seem to reflect what I call a cause- and consequence-oriented understand¬ing of disease. Latin and to some extent Old Norse names and designations from the second half of the Middle Ages can rather be characterized as reflecting a symptom- and sign-oriented understanding. I interpret this as a change, with a new understanding of disease spreading during this time. The medieval and Renaissance arts of healing in the Swedish region were to a large extent a craft: a knowledge of the hand and the senses. Within this craft an incipient professionalization is discernible already in the first half of the Middle Ages, but it seems to have been interrupted by the Black Death and partly inhibited by a series of recurring epidemics in the fifteenth century. At the same time a new wave of professionalization started, which eventually led towards a segmentation of the occupation of læknir into barber surgeons, apothecaries and doctors and the for¬malization of the new occupations in the course of the sixteenth century, with the for¬mation of new occupational ethoses. This is reflected in the more specialized material culture of instruments and vessels. The picture emerging of the treatments provided is that of a heterogeneous phenomenon, varying between milieus and over time. There were several different arts of healing or medical cultures. The easiest to discern are the secular as opposed to the monastic arts of healing, but to draw sharp lines between the two might give an impression of two homogeneous phenomena, which they were not. The secular art of healing seems to have been empirical to a high degree and remarkably unaffected by the monastic art of healing, whose medical material culture hardly spread extra claustrum. Phlebotomy, for example, seems to have had different motivations in the two sociocultural contexts. It seems as if the Black Death and the epidemics that followed had devastating consequences in the form of lost knowledge within the occu¬pation of the læknir and for the ongoing process of professionalization. This necessitated a reorientation and a compensation for lost skills with new ideas. This was sought in the medical literature and the tradition or medical culture it reflected, which up until then had not played any great role.
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- Bergqvist, Johanna
(författare)
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Medeltida läkekonst i Norden
- 2014
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Ingår i: Byahornet. - 1101-6868. ; 2, s. 30-36
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)
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- Bergqvist, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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Storgårdar under vikingatid och tidigmedeltid.
- 2013
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Ingår i: Borgare, bröder och bönder. Arkeologiska perspektiv på Skänninges äldre historia.. - 9789172096745 ; , s. 87-103
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The chapter analyzes the investigated archaeological remains of a number of large farms/manors in the city of Skänninge, in the province of Östergötland, Sweden. The authors discuss physical and social structures and echonomical foundation of the farms, and their role in the early phases of the (later) medieval town of Skänninge.
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